A blog on building a happy life by Fionnuala Zinnecker

Call Me A Copy Cat

Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery and lately I’ve been a bit of a copy cat. So Sadhbh, Helen, Julia and Clare should all be feeling very good about themselves and their brilliant blogs now.

I am a huge fan of The Busy Mama’s blog, so I started my bout of imitation by making Helen’s granola. With nuts, oats, cinnamon and coconut, it combines a lot of my favourite flavours PLUS it is much cheaper than the bought stuff AND it is unsweetened, which is great. I love it with honey and greek-style yogurt.

The next things to copy came from #homeetc, the homes and garden linky I join each Wednesday run by Caro and Jess. I love it and find so much inspiration there.

Last week was a particularly good one and I found two projects that really grabbed my attention. First up was Julia from Rainbeaubelle’s fairy garden. It reminded me so much of the kind of thing I used to love to make when I was a little girl. Gathering moss, stones, twigs and shells to make mini gardens was something I enjoyed a lot.

Even now, thirty years on, I still have great fun fiddling about with miniature things, so when I saw that Julia’s children had made a very cute fairy garden in a flower pot, I couldn’t help but have a go at sprucing up a flower pot I had outside the front door with a few forget-me-nots in it. Half and hour and some copper wire, twigs, feathers, beads and moss later I had my own fairy garden.

Also linked up to #homeetc was Maybush Studio’s jam jar upcyle. Clare had written a blog post about upcycling jam jars for storage of bits and bobs in her she shed. The idea fit perfectly into my weekend plans to re-activate our outdoor kitchen, since I store the tea bags, sugar, etc. out there in normal jam jars.

Last year we had a bit of a red theme in the outdoor kitchen. This year I was tending towards blue. One can of spray paint later, I had all my jam jar lids matching in a nice, shiny blue, a lovely match for my teatowels and paper napkins.

Last Thursday while browsing Facebook on my phone and waiting for the kettle to boil, I spotted a quick and colourful craft on Where Wishes Come From (don’t you just love the name?) – pencil pinwheels. Blogger Sadhbh is such a crafty mama and has brilliant ideas for crafts for childen. As soon as my cuppa was made, I grabbed some origami paper, a pencil and a thumbtack. Within 5 minutes I had a pretty pinwheel to cheer up Number Two who had fallen and was resting on the sofa with a cool pack.

Do you get much inspiration from blogs? Do you act on it and bake, bake or re-create what you’ve seen?

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15 thoughts on “Call Me A Copy Cat”

I get SO much inspiration too – I love blogging, I find so many ideas and wonderful things to make and do. Plus countless home, gardens and interiors ideas. And I get so many from you too! Glad you like #HomeEtc we love that you link up so much with us, feels like such a lovely little community xx

Ok I’m ON that granola. I keep meaning to make my own and this one looks good for gluten-free as I have gluten free oats plus the flavours sound so yummy. I take so much inspiration from blogs, perhaps not always recreating things but definitely in awe of what people can do X

It is really easy and quick and you can vary it. We are not big into seeds in this house, so we used linseed and poppy seed. But it is tasty and keeps well. I keep meaning to try it as crumble topping too.

I get inspiration, but I only tend to try out recipes. I always thing the craft things look amazing and get slightly jealous of everyone’s abilities. I am notoriously bad at anything craft related! It’s a guaranteed pintrest fail with me! #TwinklyTuesday

Aaah I love this Fionnu!! And I’m just the same — I get SO much inspiration from blogs or Pinterest. There are some amazingly creative people out there, that’s for sure! And half of them are average Joe’s who aren’t even doing it for a living!!! I think it’s amazing. Thanks so much for the mention lovely!!! Jess and I love your home and garden posts!! 🙂 xx

The reason I started to blog in the first place was because I found them so inspiring! I am always discovering new things to try and as a result my to-do list is longer than both my arms. I’ve now just added that gorgeous fairy garden to the list!

Fionnuala is an Irish mama to her three bilingual boys in Germany. She can usually be found, cuppa in hand, in the kitchen or garden with her children, chickens and dog. Planning new projects, writing, cooking, keeping an eye out for vintage treasures and taking photos for her award-winning blog are among her favourite pastimes. Her official job is project manager.